Az Egri Ho Si Minh Tanárképző Főiskola Tud. Közleményei. 1984. (Acta Academiae Paedagogicae Agriensis : Nova series ; Tom. 17)

I. TANULMÁNYOK A TÁRSADALOMTUDOMÁNYOK KÖRÉBŐL - Lehel Vadon: The Reception of Upton Sinclair's Works in Hungary

It cannot be denied that his Christian-Socialistic novels, or those similar to them, are the most beautiful and carefully constructed of his work. They Call Me Carpenter alongside Samuel the Seeker, which is most typical of his Christian-Socialistic novels, represent the apex of his artistic oeuvre. It is for this reason, that in spite of ideological misconceptions, he is able to draw deeper sympathy from the readers toward the oppressed, than in those novels which are less ideologically naive, but which are too wrapped up in reportage and event.

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7 Ferenc Botka associated Samuel the Seeker with the characteristic early period of socialist and workers' literature ; as being similar in content. The hero of the novel after becoming aware of the miserable lot of the unemployed, and procuring a job from which he sees exploitation at work, comes into contact with the working class movement and the ideological aspirations of his age. He educates and commits himself to the movement. He proclaims that workers must unite and defend their own interests, to fight for a better more human quality of life. He reaches the highest peaks of socialist understanding attainable, without a conscious knowledge of marxist philosophy. However, Samuel's spontaneity of action, unrelated to a wider historical context, prohibits his further development.

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8 6. Love's Pilgrimage (1911) appeared in Hungarian in three translations and four editions. The first translation of the novel was published in 1924 in Kassa, by the publishing house Munkás Könyvkereskedés with a literal translation of the original title

: A szerelem zarándokútja. This translation by Jenő Fried was also printed in serial form in Nőmunkás, the political newspaper for the working women of Kassa in the same year.

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9 In 1958, the Táncsics Publishing House offered a new translation of Sinclair's novel into the hands of the readers under a more appropriate title, A szerelem tövises útja. Because of a strange capricious whim of the publisher, the two previous translations — A szerelem zarándokútja and A szerelem kálváriája — were able to appear in print only in a shorter, incomplete form; they excluded passages being exactly those most pertinent to the whole novel. The Táncsics Publishing House translation was the first complete edition. Tibor Lutter wrote a preface to the novel in which he stated that Love's Pilgrimage alongside The Jungle was the great masterpiece from Sinclair's early period in which "we receive both a fine portrayal of private life, and a broad and convincing view of society".

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0 In 1959, in the bibliographical and literary periodical Könyvbarát, László Antal posed exactly the opposite point of view, saying that the novel was "inconsistent and ambiguous" as was the whole of Sinclair's literary career and socialist work, and that in this novel, after important best-sellers Sinclair declines into the immaturity of the young, inexperienced writer. "Humour, irony and every other attitude of epic superiority are here unhappily absent from the author's demeanour."

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1 7. Sylvia (1913) does not occupy a place among the more characteristic muckraking novels of Sinclair, that is why it is one of the least known of his novels abroad. In Hungary it was rather late to appear, published by Szikra Publishing House in 1949, in the translation of Mária Kilényi; and then at the last moment, because from the May of that year Hungarian critics commenced so strong a slanderous campaign against Sinclair that in the following decade only abusive critiques of the novelist and his work were permitted 420